New Delhi, Jan. 8: The parents of three young couples killed on 26/11 had Supreme Court judges shifting uneasily in their seats today by demanding that hotels be made responsible for any guest’s death in a terror attack.

Both the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels had ignored the terror threat and neglected security, and should pay compensation to the families of all their slain guests, the petition said. It demanded that all star hotels be made to tighten security and train staff in evacuation techniques.

Initially, the court was reluctant to intervene, the Chief Justice asking: “Do you expect police to greet guests when they walk into a hotel?”

After much persuasion by the petitioners’ lawyer, Meenakshi Arora, the court issued notices to the Centre, Maharashtra government and the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels.

Petitioners S.S. Parekh, V.K.M. Agarwal and S. Chhabria each lost a son and a daughter-in-law in the attack on the Oberoi-Trident.

They said both Taj and Oberoi-Trident were insured under the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, and the court should appoint an expert to determine and award compensation from the hotels’ insurance money.

“It has come to the knowledge of the petitioners that as part of cost-cutting measures, the Oberoi and the Taj had slashed expenditure on security personnel and equipment,” the petition said.

“Further, it appears that although some measures like metal detectors and security guards were installed, these were not adequate and, in any case, were not being actively used by the hotels on the ground that security and hospitality do not go together.”

Hotels are under an obligation to protect the lives of their guests and should be held guilty of negligence if they fail to do so, the petitioners said.

The petition asked that the guidelines for hotel security be tightened, saying they only dealt with emergencies such as fires and were inadequate to deal with terror attacks.

It urged the court to direct the government to frame new hotel safety regulations that could involve the training of staff to evacuate guests to a safe location inside the hotel in hostage-like situations till outside help arrived.

More lives could have been saved on 26/11 if the peripheral staff at the two hotels had been able to communicate with colleagues in more secure locations and moved the guests there, the petition said.

Any overall security programme, it added, should address the subject of compensation for the legal heirs of all those who die because of a hotel’s negligence.

The petition sought a direction to the Maharashtra government to beef up security at all public places in the state.